


Wrist

by LaVieEnRose



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Gap Filler, M/M, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 09:17:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14541531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVieEnRose/pseuds/LaVieEnRose
Summary: How did Justin get home from Sapperstein's party? A quick gapfiller for 2x14.





	Wrist

The streetlight above his head is is flickering. It's not in any pattern, but it kind of reminds him of the strobe lights at Babylon anyway, and if he focuses hard he thinks he can hear music, and he kind of feels like dancing anyway, or he would if he wasn't so cold.

Where are his clothes?

Thumpa thumpa, goes his heart. Brian would think that was funny. He'd stick his tongue into his cheek. I guess the rhythm really does get you. 

Or maybe, I guess you really were born for this.

Or, or, are you saying Santa Claus was inside you all along, Sunshine?

He could keep going and going, imagining words in Brian's voice, twirling under the blinking streetlight.

Except he's so cold.

**

“Hey, uh, kid?”

It takes Justin a minute to look. He forgets, sometimes, that he's still young. It feels like he's been here forever.

Hell, it feels like he's been literally here, on this sidewalk, forever. He's not under the streetlight anymore, though. Or maybe it flickered out forever. He doesn't remember. He doesn't know how long he's been here.

Maybe it's only been a second.

His knees are shaking.

“Are you okay?” the guy asks. He has a girl with him. He's probably straight, but he's tall and dark-haired and kind of looks like...

The girl says, “Luke, where are his clothes?”

The guy—Luke, his name is Luke—takes a step towards Justin, his hand up, and his arm stretches and sways. Justin shakes his head, fast.

“Not now,” Justin says.

“Can I call someone for you?” Luke says.

Brian changed his number two weeks ago, after he finally gave up hope that the last trick before the no numbers exchanged policy would stop calling. Justin can't remember the new number, but it's in his phone, which is in his pocket. Which is with his clothes.

He probably couldn't hear it anyway, over the music, the motion of Babylon.

Thumpa thumpa.

“Cab,” he manages to say, right before he throws up.

**

Miraculously, he remembers his address. More miraculously, he doesn't throw up in the cab. 

The cab driver chatters quietly to Justin, or himself, but it all sounds staticky and far away. It reminds Justin of when he was a kid and would get ear infections, and even though he's starting to remember what happened...he tells himself it's like when he was a kid, and he would get ear infections.

It's easier.

The emergency $20 in his shoe must be enough to pay for the cab, because he lets him out without yelling at him. Justin stares up at the building as the cab pulls away and really, really hopes that Brian isn't home.

**

He isn't, and Justin doesn't know how much longer it is before he wakes up on the couch to the sound of the loft door sliding open. Everything's still echoing and it all starts coming back to him in waves.

Brian glares at him from the doorway, arms and legs spread.

“Tell me,” Brian says. “That that is your puke I just stepped in.”

Justin rubs his forehead. “It is.”

“Good,” Brian says. “Then you can fucking--” He shakes his shoe, lip curled, “--clean it up.”

“Tomorrow?” Justin says weakly.

Brian stares at him, expression blank, until it hardens in the way Justin can tell is to stop it from softening. He heaves out a put-upon sigh, slips out of his shoes, and comes to the couch and takes Justin by the hand, pulling him up and towards the bed.

The loft spins, tilts. “Stop,” Justin says.

Brian pauses. “You're telling me you've got something left in your stomach after leaving that pile in our hallway?”

“No,” Justin says, more to will it to himself than anything.

“Uh-huh.” Brian crosses his arms. “Must have been quite a party.” 

Justin stands there swaying in the middle of the loft and entertains the fantasy of telling Brian. How that mocking expression would melt off his face. In the fantasy, it stays at concerned, doesn't morph immediately into anger. Brian takes his pulse and pets his hair and kisses his neck and melts down in a grand scene that Justin will remember, this time. 

But that isn't what would happen, and Justin's too lucid to pretend otherwise. It would, of course, morph immediately into anger. There would be no time to fuss over Justin before he charged back to the party to take matters into his own hands. And because this is not a fantasy, because fairy tales in Justin's life ends with blows to the head, beating the shit out of queer Pittsburgh's most powerful business owner would not magically end up with, pardon the expression, Brian on top. 

What he wouldn't give to not be too lucid to pretend otherwise.

“It was all right,” he says, and when Brian tugs him again, he lets him.

He crawls between the covers and watches Brian peel off his clothes. Brian sits next to him on the bed and presses a kiss into his temple and then pauses, lets the back of his hand touch Justin's cheek, then his forehead.

“You're a little warm,” Brian says, and Justin could live forever on the barest, rawest edge of concern he can hear underneath the disaffected sing-song.

Who needs a grand scene.

Justin clears his throat. “I am?”

Brian gets up and goes to the bathroom. A minute later, a bottle of aspirin sails out and lands on the bed next to Justin.

“Take two,” Brian says. “And blow me in the morning.” He settles into the bed beside him, and Justin feels the remains of a very drugged unconsciousness pulling at him again. He's very aware, as he slips back under, that Brian is watching him, his hands to himself, feeling like an ocean away.

**

He dreams about wrists bound in leather, floors disappearing underneath, slimy hands on his cold skin, and wakes up to a high-pitched keeling it takes him a minute to realize is coming from him. He also finds out that he's damn near tried to climb Brian like a tree—his arms around Brian's neck, legs scrambling around his waist—and is fucking embarrassed but not enough to pull away.

“Jesus Christ,” Brian mumbles, half-exasperation, half-worry. He's always gentler at night.

Brian sits up, balancing Justin on his lap, and cups the back of his head while Justin cries into his shoulder. “Jesus Christ,” Brian says again. “All right. All right.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Been a while, huh?” Brian pulls back enough to search Justin's face.

Justin looks away, loosens his grip on Brian's neck. “Must be the fever.”

Brian nods. “Okay.”

Slowly, Justin untangles himself from Brian and settles himself back on his pillow. Brian moves him off of it, carefully, and rests Justin's head against his chest instead.

“All better?” Brian asks.

Justin swallows. “Yeah.”

Casually, like an accident, Brian catches his wrist. Justin watches him lay two fingers under his palm.

Feels his pulse.


End file.
